The Indy 500: One of the Best Weekends of My Life.

It was 1990; I was 14, and geared up to get my groove on. One of my best buds, Tim Venable invited me to go with him, his older sister Valerie and her boyfriend to the weekend long party that is the Indy 500. Having heard of the debauchery and chaos of the Snakepit, I decided this was an opportunity I could not miss.





Early Saturday morning we headed out on our trek a few hours south to Indianapolis. We stopped at a gas station for gas and snacks and I overheard a police office and the gas station worker laughing about the ridiculous crime the cop had just finished investigating. Apparently, someone had broken into the drive-thru window of a Dairy Queen, left the cash register untouched and sauntered away with a few bags of delicious Dilly Bars. Tim and I chuckled about what kind of weirdo would steal a bunch of Dilly Bars, even though it was supposed to be an extremely hot weekend.






MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” was our soundtrack as we laughed our way down I65 towards the stomping grounds of one of my heroes, David Letterman. We unpacked the car and headed to the party. All of the heavy hitters were already there. One of the first things we saw was Jim Nabors drunkenly singing while hanging outside his hotel room door. You know it’s a party when Gomer Pyle is ripped and there are titties flopping around all over the place. To this day, I have yet to see more pairs of breasts over the course of a weekend. Sure most of them were droopy and dilapidated, but to a 14 year-old kicking back with a few of those giant Old Style cans, I was in heaven.



Motorhead, hillbilly, tittie heaven.


The race was as boring as any multi-hour auto-race could be. Yes, auto racing is a sport, but I think trying to get from the loop to O'hare in less than 45 minutes is more difficult of a sport/ I slept off my hangover on the top of a car as Arie Luyendyk took the checkered flag. The only reason I remember the winner was because of the delicious irony of the winner being sponsored by Domino’s Pizza, as there were a bunch of Domino’s related speeding accidents at the time.







We returned home sunburned and exhausted from the exhilarating trip, and the biggest surprise of the trip had yet to come. The Dairy Queen Dilly Bar caper had easily been solved as the perpetrator enthusiastically confessed his crime of passion to me. If you know me well enough, you can easily solve the case too. The clues are right here for you. Every Memorial Day weekend I think about Tim and the great time we had down in Indy. I wish I could call Tim to reminisce and thank him again for taking me on such a fun trip and giving me one of the best weekends of my life. R.I.P Tim, I love and miss you brother.